Positivity: The 18-year-old girl who has had three hearts

From Choppington, in North Umberland, UK:

Last updated at 21:08pm on 10th May 2008

Leanne Nicholson is in many ways like any other 18-year-old. Slim, blonde, pretty, and planning a career as a youth worker, she is devoted to her pony Merrylegs and her fluffy Pomeranian dog Timothy.

But she is also a medical miracle, and lucky to be alive.

In her short life Leanne has had no fewer than three hearts - the one she was born with and not one, but two transplanted hearts.

Today, she is recovering at her home in Choppington, in Northumberland, from her second heart transplant three months ago.

“To receive a second heart transplant is a million-to-one chance as there is such a shortage of donor organs,” says Leanne.

“I know now I have to do the very best I can with my life and make the most of the chances I’ve been given.

“I’m just so grateful to the families who lost their loved ones and took the difficult decision to donate their hearts for transplantation. I think about them every day, without fail.”

Until the age of 12, Leanne was a normal, healthy child.

“She used to be outside doing handstands and riding ponies all the time. She was the picture of health,” says her mother Helen, 40, a youth worker.

But in April 2002 a virus - unnamed and unknown - swept through her body, attacking the muscle tissue of her heart.

“At first we thought Leanne had flu,” says her father Robert, also 40, who runs a cleaning company.

“We had no idea how ill she was. She just seemed under the weather. Then she began to be listless and had difficulty walking up the stairs.

“So we took her to our GP. The doctor listened to her heart and visibly went pale. The next thing we knew we were rushing to hospital in an ambulance.

“At the hospital we were with Leanne in a treatment room surrounded by so many doctors we lost count. After what seemed like forever one of them took us aside to tell us the bad news.”

Leanne was diagnosed with severe cardiomyopathy, literally “heart muscle disease”.

Her heart was so damaged by the virus - which by then had passed out of her system - that the doctors said it was as though she’d suffered three major heart attacks.

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